MemesThe auth left really sure do hate being called auth left, don't they?
I’m in Washington, Washington is 3,000 miles away ☹️
people's reaction when i tell them our new govt could absolutely threaten to hang orban and his cronies unless they give back the public money they stole. oh no, that's a bridge too far. they have a paper that says it's theirs so now there's nothing we can do.
Violence begets violence. Whoever stops the cycle has true power.
Incoherent
Pacifism is only a choice if you have the capability to enact violence. If you don’t have the ability to exert force, pacifism isn’t a choice; it’s a chain that your oppressors have put on you, while calling it jewelry. The entire point of pacifism is to send the message “we can if we want to, and we choose not to. This is your chance to start negotiations in good faith, because the only thing stopping us is that active choice.”
In short, pacifism without the capacity for violence is simply sparkling victimization. Speak softly, but carry a big stick.
Speak softly, but carry a big stick.
A 9mm would be preferred at least.
What is "true power" if not the ability to dictate the direction of society? Should the working classes not be able to direct society, and instead have to slave away under the rule of capital, who very much are okay with using violence?
Talking to other Americans,
"This is just what we have to deal with"
"Thats how it is in America"
"Yeah nobody likes it but we have to live with it"
Please, I'm begging you, I've heard everyone say it, just get together, please.
i hear this a lot in my own country too. it's something we will have to figure out where it comes from and how to disarm. why do people feel this way?
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."
-Martin Luther King Jr
The truth is people are rarely good or bad. The vast majority of people are simply creatures of comfort, and will be adverse to losing that comfort over all other things.
little do they know they aren't that comfortable, and don't need oppression themselves anyway.
Not comfortable, comfort. The comfort of routine, the predictable, the familiar… and fighting against a fascist government is very uncomfortable, especially from that perspective. Once they cease to feel comfort, then people act.
That’s why massive social revolutions tend to be preceded by famines. Food comfort (that is, the idea of always having food available, even if so expensive one needs a 5-finger discount to get any) is one of the major motivational comforts, so its loss tends to hit very hard socially.
The message that this is as good as it can possibly be is hammered into people from all sides. It is, I would argue, one of the key tenets of all forms of idealism, and serves the interests of the powers that be. People who don't believe that better is possible are much less likely to try to rise up and make things better.
100% this. Lots of Americans would be on board with things like universal healthcare, except that they genuinely believe that private healthcare is better. The propaganda machine has them thinking we’d all be forced to pay like 147% of our income in taxes, while also being stuck on a waiting list for 18 months (determined by a shadowy death panel, who arbitrarily decides who is allowed to live and who must be surgically executed) for even the most basic procedures.
Meanwhile they pay a huge portion in premiums only to be denied coverage when they actually need it. Somehow the 'death panels' are a-okay as long as they're the boards of for-profit hospitals or insurance companies. The contradictions are sharpening though (see the doctor shortage) and I think all but the most brainwashed are waking up. You only have to look at the overwhelmingly positive reception Luigi got to see that.
boards of for-profit hospitals or insurance companies
This needs to be constantly hammered down: Capitalism put healthcare of society in the hands of people who are incentivised to deny the healthcare to society.
Somehow, if you replaced Marx with the founding fathers the US deifies, the meme would still work. That's where we're at in the liberalism-to-fascism pipeline.
